Under fire CEO defends Alice Springs camp 'squalor' after Kumanjayi Little Baby death

The entry to Old Timers town camp, with a love heart drawn on the road. (ABC News: Xavier Martin)

The leader of Alice Springs's town camp authority rarely gives interviews anymore.

The fourth-generation town camper, Walter Shaw, has been in the role for more than 15 years, but has largely kept out of the spotlight, even as his council faces national scrutiny.

Most recently, the alleged abduction and murder of five-year-old girl Kumanjayi Little Baby, who was taken from an Alice Springs town camp house, has triggered questions about the state of the camps — 16 small Aboriginal communities on the town's fringes.

Mr Shaw is the CEO of Tangentyere Council, one of the key organisations charged with providing services to town camps and managing the maintenance of homes in them.

Walter Shaw has been the CEO of Tangentyere Council for more than 15 years. (ABC News: Xavier Martin)

"I think the events of what's taken place with the tragedy around Kumanjayi Little Baby should enact change," Mr Shaw told 7.30 in an exclusive interview.

For the hundreds of residents who call the town camps home, the issues faced are many and varied: broken locks and showers, late-night uninvited drunken visitors, and overcrowding.

The exterior of the home where Kumanjayi Little Baby went missing from in the Old Timers town camp. (ABC News: Matt Garrick)

"But when it's out of my hands to allow for a house to be upgraded and brought up to standardised living conditions, governments have to take responsibility with regard to how we all manage our houses, whether it be on town camps or remote communities,

"I think we're doing as much as [what's in] our contract to do with regard to up-keeping of housing on the town camps,."

Many Alice Springs residents have a perception that Tangentyere Council, should and could be doing much more to ensure that residents are safe and looked after.

When images of the home Kumanjayi Little Baby was taken from spread across the media, that scrutiny escalated.

The death of Kumanjayi Little Baby sparked tough questions about her circumstances. (ABC News: Xavier Martin)

Coalition Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price questioned "how on earth" the amount of government funding received by Tangentyere could be justified, considering the results on the ground.

"Anyone with eyes in their head can walk around a town camp and see the conditions in which our most marginalised are living in and the squalor that children are living in," she said in a Senate estimates hearing last week.

The senator is calling for more external scrutiny of the organisation.

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